Saark
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2010
- Messages
- 2,343
It's not as big as TI (yet). It had $15mil prizepool last year, but they're spreading things around to a lot more esports this time around, so the Dota2 prizepool is currently set at $5mil (this might change, but it's the most recent info). More importantly, the spread of the prizepool is a lot saner (33% for #1 instead of the insane 45% that TI had. Everybody gets a bigger cut except the #1 team). The majors leading up to Riyadh are also a lot better and spread the money around more.But, like you said yourself - Riyad Masters is the new TI with an insane prize pool, so I don't really see the different.
Some orgs also genuinely have to consider whether it's worth participating due to it being a Saudi Arabian hosted tournament with strong political ties, which flies in the face of many orgs DEI and LGBTQ+ sponsorships. As far as Valve is concerned, it means they don't have to foot the bill for the biggest DotA tournament of the year anymore. Worst case, nothing changes other than Valve saving some money, but the changes to player contracts isn't gonna get reverted now that players have recognized how much better the current situation is.
Keep in mind that for the largest part of esports being a thing, most orgs had incredibly predatory contracts and practices because the people they were signing on were 16-22y olds who oftentimes didn't even consult a lawyer before signing into a contract that could potentially cost them millions. There was a lot of abuse and exploitation going on behind the scenes. The shift towards treating it like a proper employment and business is a fairly new development, and many esports orgs and player careers had to die for it to happen because the old way of doing this just wasn't sustainable.
Don't get me wrong, it's still bad, and having the dota2 esports circuit be this heavily dominated by the oilers is not good long-term either. But it's better than it used to be.